Pathfinder Module: The Dragon's Demand (PFRPG)

Founded by a famous dragonslayer, the small town of Belhaim has become a sleepy rural community just off the beaten path, a settlement where everyone knows everyone and strangers are the talk of the town. But when Belhaim’s peace and quiet is shattered by the sudden collapse of the last standing tower of its founder’s castle, things quickly bloom out of control. Why were there bodies of kobolds amid the rubble? What’s the sinister secret behind the strange sounds of flapping wings in the night? And what’s happened to local wizard Balthus Hunclay, who’s not answering knocks on his door? The collapsed tower had long been an eyesore to the cantankerous old man—could he have had something to do with its destruction? And what of the rumors of strange stirrings in nearby Dragonfen? Has Belhaim’s ancient draconic nemesis returned?

"The Dragon’s Demand" is a deluxe super-adventure for 1st-level characters, and includes 64 action-packed pages of adventure and new monsters, plus a beautiful double-sided, full-color poster map of the town of Belhaim and an important miniatures-scale battleground! Players can expect to reach 7th level by the time they complete this epic adventure—if they manage to survive the wrath of a dragon when his demands aren’t met!

Written by Mike Shel.
Cover Art by Lars Grant-West.

Pathfinder Modules are 64-page, high-quality, full-color, adventures using the Open Game License to work with both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set. This Pathfinder Module includes new monsters, treasure, a double-sided poster map, and a fully detailed bonus location that can be used as part of the adventure or in any other game!

Average product rating:

Way to go Mike Shel

What we have here is a good module for new players. I ran this for a 4 person party of experienced players all whom were testing out the Advanced Class Playtest.

The settings is great, Belhaim is a great city for new players!
I think this would be a premier module for new players as well as the rest of the Paizo dragon supplements.

Dragons Unleashed

Dragonslayer’s Handbook

This is unfortunately what I think some GM’s will miss. I will try to come around to it again but Mike Shel has really done really well with the content, some of this will be easily be missed by GM’s.

So let’s talk about Belhaim, the small town is really well represented. There is allot here, I would expect the more you let the players interact with the town the more they will appreciate it. This really is a great setting.

I will not spoil anything.

The first chapter is great everything here works. My party was almost died in the first part. They ended up getting robbed of most of their money. There is a very memorable NPC here.

The second chapter is great as well, Maffei is probably the most memorable NPC, I have ever GM’d. I am not sure if it is intended but the effects of interacting with her can really cause some long term effects.

The third chapter the Auction, I don’t think my party enjoyed this part. Then again I robbed them instead of killing them it ended up being very fun for me. So I guess a lesson learned, when a villain asks to talk when 3 party members are down sometimes it is just a good time to surrender.

Combat wise I think I ran all but 4 encounters from the whole module. One of the ones I skipped the party just didn’t encounter. One I rewarded PC for previous actions. The other two were very low levels.

Extra points for Mike that he included morale effects that very interesting, instead of the typical "fights to the death" that I often see. I think about 1/3 of the encounters ended due to morale. It is a great addition.

I think the toughness and challenge rating was spot on.

Grioths, are awesome I hope they make it into some more of Mike Shels works. They work on their first and second appearances. In hindsight I would of like to see more developed NPC’s based on them.

Yangethe a tough new monster, in my play it utterly destroyed the PC’s, a single player fled later retrieving his unconscious party members. Then the true interactions with Maffei presented itself.

Aeterperax very well written, a very nice map for the encouter.

Major Spoilers:

The Crypt of Tula, with her blessings the fight with Alturic was a bit to easy.

Keen longbow caused some problems since it is on the chronicle sheets for PFS.

The three commanders, the hardest for my group was the alchemist.

Lets talk about Maffei, the players loved her, my players used all 3 scrolls of restoration on her, after fighting the Yangethe unfortunately 3 players ended up with CHA of 0. So they ended up having to travel outside the city to get replacement scrolls.

Aeterperax, great dragon, I routinely used the Improved Vital Strike and relocated to the ledges the next round. By the time the PC's would close I had him do a AOO trip against the Barbarian type. Really great to see that the Green Dragon has the right motivations.

No monster stats = 1 star module

I was at my local game store browsing. I was looking for something that would be easy to use in a Pathfinder game to run with some friends. I saw this module on the shelf and saw that it was designed for level 1 characters. I became interested.

I decided to buy this module because there was a statement below the table of contents that said, "This book refers to several other Pathfinder Roleplaying Game products using the following abbreviations, yet these additional supplements are not required to make use of this book." Unfortunately this statement turned out to be false, supplements are required to make use of the book.

When I got home and started reading the module I was shocked to find that there are no stats for the monsters! I wasn't expecting massive write ups for each monster, just enough to be usable in a game. I feel ripped off after spending my money on this module.

Pathfinder could remedy the situation by perhaps making a short errata pdf for download that gives basic monster stats for the encounters found in the module. Or/and, even better, include the monster stats in future modules that you publish.

Excellent Adventure

Just wrapped up this adventure with my in house group. Loved the entire module. A great amount of detail went into every design aspect. I really liked how it was around 5 different dungeons to explore and loot over the course of the campaign. The village of Belhaim was incredibly detailed, as were all of the locations. Could not get enough. It is obviously written for 4 player characters but a well experienced GM should know how to tweak it to make it good to go for 5 or more PC's. And of course the final battle was all I hoped it would be. Especially since my character played a crucial role in the end. I highly recommend this to any group looking for an excellent module to run (all of paizo's modules are great in my opinion though). A must have for any serious gaming group looking for a classic adventure with all the trimmings of an outstanding campaign.

Needs adjustment for more than 4 players

While I liked the new format, this module is a cake-walk for larger player groups. My group of 5-7 players ran rough-shod through 95% of the encounters. The end encounter was over in less than 5 rounds.

I knew that the module was intended for 4 players, so I adjusted the encounters accordingly, but it still wasn't enough of a challenge.

Spoiler:

I doubled and even tripled the number of 'mook' creatures, which helped somewhat.

Changing the Neh-Thalggu to a living version instead of a zombie was the most challenging fight the players had throughout the entire module.

If I ran this again, I would bump the dragon to the next age category to ensure the players face a dragon worthy of the name.

The module provides so much help in the way of NPCs and magic treasure as to almost be overwhelming. If you have a large group of players, you may want to have the potential NPC allies go their separate ways. My group didn't need the extra help.

Love the new format

I've generally avoided buying individual modules, preferring to either do it myself or go with something more comprehensive, like an Adventure Path. I tried this one out on a whim, and I'm really glad that I did.

I think the complaints about the module being too single-minded are way off base; the module includes a lot of information about the town itself, the history of its founder, the people who live there, and the political divisions that lurk behind the smiling (or frowning) faces. And it's not just background info for the GM - there are numerous sub-quests (with xp rewards!) to encourage the players to get invested in the town and get to know people. If you're looking for a good introductory module for a new group, and don't want to commit to an entire Adventure Path, this is a great place to start.

I'm deducting one star becomes the reversible map, while showing a wonderful guide to the town, has perhaps the dullest possible miniatures map on the back. The module contains a lot of really interesting maps (that are often a lot of work to draw), and they chose to illustrate the simplest map possible. I would have appreciated a map of the Kobold warren much more than the auction house.